Emma Hanson - Available for hire!

New Images now up! Head over to the Photography page to check out my best snaps!

I am now on IMDB!

My Updated Linkedin Profile

This is a link to the One Cloud Fest Competition of Fall 2011 - Documentary category. 

‘When the Sun Hits Hardest’ is a spanish documentary by filmmaker Alba Prol Cid and co-edited by myself. The film looks at the depopulation of rural villages from the emotive view of the people suffering most in the heat of the crisis and what that means to traditional spanish family life. The film has been screened in festivals across the world and is doing well in the One Cloud International Film Competition but is up against some strong films. The team and I would love your support. Please check out the films nominated and get involved by voting for your favourite pieces at the orange link above.

enjoyed speaking to 3rd years at UWE today in a seminar about careers after graduation. Good to be back and on the other side of the lecture

Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement Speech 2005 

Such an inspiration to us all.

(via burningfp)

Now up on the CV page. Please check it out and let me know what you think.

I took these images for the new theatre company The Libertine during their final dress rehearsal for their latest performance of ‘Sick at Heart’; “a pleasing pair of dramatic duologues on 17th Century devotion.”

With talented original writing and a challenging new adaption, this production boasts stunning performances from it’s four cast members in a very atmospheric venue.

For more information and tickets click the link. 

The short documentary directed and produced by Alba Prol Cid and edited by myself has been doing well over the summer. The film looks at the Spanish summer village festivals that celebrate the patron saints of each village and brings families back together through depopulation, diaspora, migration and economically unstable times that effects every village in Galicia in the north west of Spain. 

I have just received an email from Alba with news that in March, the emotive and compelling film won an Award of Merit at the International Best Shorts film festival and competition. 

Even more excitingly, the short won Best Student Film at the Prometheus Film Festival in U.S.A! 

We have also been nominated in the category of Best Short Documentary Film at the One Cloud Festival. Votes are still being taken through Facebook and if you’d like to watch the documentary and vote the direct link to the film is HERE! The team would all appreciate your support; voting ends December 3rd. 

On the 19th of July, I began a two month internship in the studio department of Bristol based events management company Sounds Commercial. I applied for the opportunity through a University of the West of England initiative, to help get graduates into employment and gain experience. 

www.sounds-commercial.co.uk

I began my internship working on a series of training videos for Synthotech and the BG group, working on correcting the colour grade to even out the differences between two different states on two days of shoots. I also helped to make the required amendments to the videos. I learnt a ridiculous amount in my first few weeks. Many shortcuts and tools in Final Cut Pro had been shown to me that I had never been aware of in my four years previous experiences. I also learnt much about encoding to WMV and FLV files for the web. 

I then moved on to begin to create an archive system for the main studio edit suite. The previous system had enjoyed four years of neglect previously with hundreds of projects strewn over numerous hard drives, most with missing media. This was a monster of a task to get as many of the projects as possible into completely online sequences for mastering off and archiving, a task that I sadly didn’t get to finish. Although a tedious job, I was shown much patience by studio manager Laurie Gibbs and made a start to the job. 

During this time, I had completed an edit for a Soul Train promotional video that can be seen HERE! and a cut for a Body Shop Awards event opening clip. I had been given the opportunity to further my camera skills by filming a charity football match between Sounds Commercial and Affinion. I then cut a highlights edit of the event. 

Perhaps the most exciting project I got to work on, however, during my time at the company was a Documentary DVD, 35 years in the making. The Spirit of ‘76 was the title of an event held earlier this year to celebrate the Bristol City Football promotion team’s successes. The DVD, soon to be released in shops in and around Bristol, targets die hard city fans and features an edit of the event that had to be completely re-cut by myself due to the fact that the host of the evening has recently faced prosecution resulting in the feeling that he should be removed from the memory of the event. BBC Points West journalist Alistair Durden stepped in to aid the edit and voice the narration to structurally save the absence of a host. A news report of the event can be seen HERE.

The two months flew by too quickly. I am very grateful to Laurie and the team for everything I learnt from them and the confidence they have given me to work in a professional environment. I now feel more comfortable in working in a studio environment with a strong external client focus and hope that my skills as an editor have improved. 

p.s. The ‘Rubix Cubes’ thing refers to a line on my CV that states that I can solve a rubix cube in 90 seconds. Although true, I was asked on many occasions to prove this and have since become known for this trivial skill. I was advised to remove this from my CV by my university professors but I now see that it is one of those small quirks that people remember about me and it’s a good thing to have. 

Since my last post, many great things have happened. 

Following on from The Secrets of Monkey Island post, Edinburgh Fringe Festival was an absolute success for the UWE Drama Society and myself. Tickets sold out just a few days after they had gone on sale for Monkey Island and the two other shows presented enjoyed bountiful audiences. Both good and bad reviews followed for the shows as was expected but all involved had a fantastic week. We all saw some incredible shows, met some incredible people and it’s safe to say that much inspiration has been taken from the week in the Scottish capital.

I also graduated in the time since my last post with a First Degree with Honours in BA Media Practice. The ceremony took place in Bristol Cathedral with a Hogwarts themed dress code of skirts, ties and sweeping black cloaks ; ) I was suggested to me several times by a member of my family that I should frame my degree and put it, pride of place, in the loo… Is it just me or would you be unwilling to turn your certifications into rather expensive reading material?

On the 19th of July, most excitingly, I began a two month Graduate internship at Sounds Commercial as described in the post above. It went brilliantly and I really did learn a vast amount from it’s very talented studio team. 

So all in all, a fantastic summer. I was considering going back to complete a second summer working for The Coalition for the Homeless in Camp Homeward Bound in Bear Mountain, up state New York but the decision to stay in the UK and kick start my career has hopefully turned out to be a good move. I guess we’ll see in the coming months. 

So rehearsals have begun for The University of the West of England’s Drama Society’s adaptation of ‘The Secret of Monkey Island’. Adapted for stage by Bristol based animator and filmmaker Peter Kimball-Evans, the hilarious show holds a fantastically strong cast of award winning students from the University of the West of England. I am looking forward to my role as assistant stage manager for the show and whole heartedly recommend that if you are up in Edinburgh for the festival on the 22nd or 23rd of August, you come and see it! It will truly be one of those little gems of the festival.

Click Here for more information and tickets!

90 Seconds Tv - UK BDM Campaign

I recently worked with a New Zealand based company called 90 Seconds TV. They are looking to set up a base in the UK, Bristol and, doing what they do best, they wanted to create a 90 second video to advertise for a business development manager position. I helped to shoot a couple of the shots in the ad and colour graded using Magic Bullet Looks to give it impact. I realise that there is a slightly too harsh halo effect around the head in the graded shots but I was not asked to correct it.  

Ungraded:

Graded:

‘Imprinted’ - An original play by Craig Platt.

This play recently enjoyed a two day run at the Royal West of England Academy, Bristol on the 23rd and 24th of June. The commedia dell’arte piece in which I played the characters of Clown and Sir William Caldwell became the first play to be shown in the stunning art gallery space. It will be back for a longer run at the beginning of August at the Alma Tavern. For a review, please see the post bellow.

@JBonser: REVIEW - "Imprinted"

jbonser:

I had never before tonight been to the RWA (Royal West of England Academy) in Bristol. It is a beautiful building - stone pillars, marble, lots of stuff-that-looks-like-marble. There are some amazing paintings in the galleries and it was lovely to walk around and take in. It certainly didn’t have…